


Bittersweet

by pherryt



Series: Clint Barton Bingo [2]
Category: MCU, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Endgame, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Laura's POV, Nightmares, endgame coda, mentioned canon deaths from movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 07:05:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pherryt/pseuds/pherryt
Summary: When Clint returns home, Laura finds he's not quite the same man he used to be.





	Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

> i had started a completely different story for my Laura Barton square for the Clint bingo and then i saw endgame and i knew what i had to do.
> 
> this is only my second square and it was picked by my friend li_izumi
> 
> not beta'd  
> warning; having keyboard difficulties so there might be punctuation and capital issues that i haven't caught.

The day Clint became an avenger, Laura had been filled with mixed feelings, at once proud and terrified.

With Clint already a member of SHIELD, Laura was no stranger to the danger he courted on an all too regular basis, but being an Avenger amplified that by magnitudes she wasn't even ready to try and figure out.

But he was doing what Clint always did - making things better, making the world safer. And she was so damn proud of him for that, but also really fucking scared for the day he didn’t come back.

It never occurred to her that it might be the other way around.

When Clint was put on house arrest, she’d been so relieved, and then felt guilty for feeling that way, for depriving the world of the good Clint could do. But it was hard to hold on to that guilt when the kids had been so ecstatic that dad was home for longer than a week or two at a time.

Clint seemed to take to it well enough, usually, though he was occasionally plagued by restless jitters. She dreaded the day the ankle monitor came off and he took up his bow for work instead of fun, instead of teaching Lila.

Before everything, Clint had had his fair share (and maybe more than his fair share, she’d say if anyone asked) of nightmares. He certainly had plenty of fodder for them over the years, starting with his childhood. After New York – which she wasn’t high enough up the food chain to get all the details on – his nightmares were worse.

But they’d managed. Somehow. As a team, as a family, they pulled through and Clint remained smiling.

These days, though, these days were different.

It was over five years later since the snap she didn’t remember. Since the world changed more than she could have ever imagined. One minute, they’d been setting up for a family dinner, the next, she and the children were standing in the obviously abandoned yard of their – now - worse for wear home.

She knew it had not looked like that only 30 seconds before.

And Clint was nowhere in sight.

First making sure the kids were all right, she reached for the phone, breathing a sigh of relief when he answered. But he’d sounded strange – and then he’d been cut off. Her panic when it took so long to reach him again was horrific.

And when he came home, he wasn’t the same Clint that she’d known. Not just the haircut, or the outfit, or the extra scars he’d gathered.

But in his eyes, his fears, his nightmares.

He didn’t laugh or smile as much. Couldn’t let them out of his sight. When he walked up to the door and the four of them piled out towards him, the children knowing nothing wrong and Laura only just then suspecting, he’d fallen to his knees and hugged them all, crying the whole time. Ugly, heart wrenching sobs.

It had scared the children.

It had scared  _her._

What had happened?

She was quick to realize, from the little he said, from the way he acted, from his panic whenever he couldn’t find even one of them for far too long – which wasn’t long at all – that he’d lived her worst nightmare.

_Five years._

Her and the children had been gone for five years. A blink of an eye to them, literal hell on earth to him.

He woke often, now, plagued by more nightmares than ever. The old ones mixing with the new ones in terrifying ways he would barely talk about it. She found him wandering the house at night more than once, obsessively checking that each of them were where they were supposed to be, where they belonged even though he insisted the danger had passed.

She learned about more about the past five years from news, from specials, from other Avengers who stopped by to check on him than from Clint himself, but she didn’t push, trying to give him the space and time he needed.

That would have to change eventually, but for now she watched him carefully, tried to support him unobtrusively, and worried.

Clint wouldn’t leave the farm. Wouldn’t go back to his job no matter how often Mr. Fury asked. Wouldn’t go see a therapist like Mr. Wilson urged him to. Others stopped by, but never Natasha.

She was gone and Clint would only look at Laura with haunted eyes when she or the children asked. Laura learned not to ask.

His nights were sleepless, memories playing behind those eyes that he refused to discuss, and it killed her every time to know there was nothing she could really do. But she loved Clint, and she would still try.

She woke this night as she had many others to the empty presence of her bed, the cold that seeped into her bones from no longer being curled together with her husband. She sat up, a sliver of light from the window showing him standing there, a silhouette, all too still.

“Clint, come back to bed,” she said, sliding off the bed to join him at the window, sliding her arms around him and laying her head against his bare back. “You need sleep.”

His head bowed and a hand, rough and calloused, gently – always gentle – covered hers. He didn’t say anything.

They stood like that for a while and Laura had no idea what time it was, only that he wasn’t able to rest. The sun was starting to peak up over the horizon before she heard his voice: low, choked and absolutely filled with pain.

“You were gone. I turned my back for an instant – just an instant – and you, the kids, and nearly everyone else I ever cared for just… gone,” he said, taking a deep breath, gathering strength to talk. She nearly held her own as she waited.

“You think you know what to expect, how bad the pain would be at a loss like that – hell, losing any of you, it’s always been my worst fear. But for it to actually _happen_ \- Laura, I couldn’t take the pain. _It hurt so goddamn much_. Without you, without the kids, I wasn’t the same person. I lost myself and… I’m afraid you wouldn’t have liked me very much. You would _definitely_ have not been proud of me.”

“But it’s over, Clint,” she said softly, moving to rub her hands over his bare back. “We’re here. We’re safe. And that’s  _because_ of you. We’re alive and safe because of  _you_ and the work you do.”

He shuddered in her arms and she urged him gently to turn around, sliding her hands up his back to cup his head and neck and pull his head down into hers. He nuzzled down into her neck, wetness hitting her though he didn’t make a sound. His arms came up tight around her as he shook.

She didn’t know if he was _ever_ going to be okay, if he’d ever recover from the trauma that so many people were facing these days. Sam had whispered to her the words ‘survivors guilt’ at Tony’s funeral and she didn’t understand.

Because they were here now, back, alive and well.

And she just wanted their family to be happy again, for _Clint_ to be happy again.

She just didn’t know _how._

 


End file.
